Migrations and the Settlement of Mindanao

Abstract

One of the more serious obstacles to economic progress and human betterment in many of the less developed countries is the dense settlement of the present cultivated land, coupled with a rapidly increasing population. In much of southern and eastern Asia where most of the good land has been occupied by relatively dense agricultural populations for centuries and where rapidly declining mortality has sharply increased the rate of population growth, heavy land pressure is both chronic and acute. A rapidly increasing population is particularly characteristic of the Philippines where crude birth rates have remained more or less stable at about 50 per thousand since 1900 and where death rates have dropped progressively and are now about 20 per thousand. The present rate of natural increase, approximately three per cent per year, is not only higher than in most Asian countries, but is also higher than in most countries of the world. If this rate of population growth continues unabated, and the evidence suggests that it is more likely to accelerate rather than diminish in the near future, the population of the Philippines will double well before the end of the present century.